Mental Illness In Amy Bloom's Silver Water

Film portrayals of the mentally ill, have contributed to the stigma faced by people with these conditions. Films tend to create and reinforce the same certain stereotypes of the mentally ill. The film Silver Linings Playbook, is a refreshing departure from from this pattern. Exaggerated cinematic portrayals have largely bypassed mental illnesses , such as; Bipolar disorder, Anxiety Disorder, Borderline Personality Disorder, Depression, etc. This film Silver LInings PLaybook, accurately depicts these common disorders among several characters in this film. The three main characters that blatantly show this depiction, are; Pat, Tiffany, and Pat’s best friend Danny Mcdaniels.

The film “Girl, Interrupted” is a true story adapted from the original memoir by Susanna Kaysen. Set in the 1960s, it relates her experiences during her stay in a mental institution after being diagnosed with borderline personality disorder following a suicide attempt. Many films include characters with a mental illness; the actors who play these characters have the immense challenge of staying true to the illness they portray.

Laurell K. Hamilton spoke in great words that, “there are wounds that never show on the body that are deeper and more hurtful than anything that bleeds.” Hamilton embodied a central state of mind of a person who is mentally ill. The wounds mentioned are those caused, and worsened, by traumatic events and public perception of a person with a mental illness. The women in the short stories that have been read embody an internal injury caused by an outward force. In “Story of an Hour”, “Rose for Emily”, and “Yellow Wallpaper” it is impactfully shown how traumatic life experiences can lead to and worsen mental illnesses.

During a party when Rose was twenty-six, Williams went off on her by saying, “I hate the sight of your ugly old face” (Hoare)! Rose’s illness made her become delusional and a compulsive liar. This disgusted Williams for this was not the sister he knew. Williams never really understood his sister’s illness. Rose’s schizophrenia only got worse as time went on. Finally, her parents felt she was not fit for society in her state. Rose was taken to the State Hospital in Farmington where doctors performed a bilateral prefrontal lobotomy. Tennessee Williams regrets to not stopping the lobotomy, because his sister was never the same again and never recovered. Due to the regret, Williams financed his sister’s private care until his death in 1983. Even though the siblings had a very dysfunctional relationship; Tennessee shows the haunting and suffering he felt in his plays due to his sister’s illness.

The book Maus is written by Artie Spiegelman. Artie’s father is a Holocaust survivor, and a prisoner of war; this is the main event of the story. Artie uses imagery in the form of animals to display race in the graphic novel of Maus. The survivors of the Holocaust are burdened with mental disorders; Artie acknowledges the trauma and the effect it has on the survivors as well as the people around them. Artie uses figurative language and imagery to demonstrate relationships and mental health issues.

     In the film “ A Beautiful Mind” John Nash experiences a few different positive symptoms. The first of these positive symptoms are seen through the hallucinations John has of having a room -mate while at Princeton. This room- mate continues to stay “in contact” with John through out his adult life and later this room- mate’s niece enters Johns mind as another coinciding hallucination. Nash’s other hallucination is Ed Harris, who plays a government agent that seeks out Nash’s intelligence in the field of code- breaking.

Everyone has a different way to deal with overwhelming situations. It can be more difficult for people with mental illness to cope with the hardships of life. For instance, in “Horses of the Night,” the character of Chris has dissociative symptoms that can be linked to his depression. Margaret Laurence’s short story tells the story of Chris, a young teenager who moves to from a small farm to the town of Manawaka in order to go to high school. The story is told by his younger cousin, Vanessa. As she grows up, she learns that Chris is depressed. The author uses the theme of fantasy to show that he does not cope well with reality. The horses, Shallow Creek, and the children are symbols that show us the fantasy that Chris lives in.

Author Michael I. Niman is a professor of journalism at Buffalo State College. In his article “Bottled Insanity," Niman claims that the rage for imported bottled water is unnecessary. Niman argues that people in America are “mad” for Fiji Water because they are “being sold a fantasy. A moment in Fiji. A taste of Fiji”. The author describes how this craze for “designer water” is negatively effecting our environment. According to the Niman, to transport a bottle of water from Fiji to Western New York State requires packing the water into cardboard boxes made from rain forest trees, loading the bottles onto trucks that require gasoline that are driven to a cargo ships powered by fossil fuels, which are then shipped to The United States, and again loaded onto trains and trucks and transported all across the country, then from the warehouses the bottles are delivered everywhere you buy Fiji Water. The author supports his claim that this infatuation of “designer water” is “bottled insanity” by informing the reader that this process “threatens the very existence of the tropical paradise” because of how it is negatively effecting Fiji including the island’s “chronic water shortage”. In continuation, Niman brings up the fact that where he lives, in Western New York State he is fairly close to both the great lakes and Adirondack mountain aquifers. In addition, the author reveals that his region already has “some of the best water on the planet”. Overall, according to Niman the

In her first journal entry Kaysen tells how the decision for her to go to McLean Hospital was based on a twenty minute conversation with a psychiatrist. Kaysen had been picking at her acne and been acting out in ways which would not be considered unusual for teens today, but at the time it was a sufficient excuse for commitment to an institution. In an interview, Kaysen further develops the idea that her illness was influenced by outside factors saying, “ [Her] retrospective account of her confinement at McLean Hospital makes a cultural intervention that challenges the notion that mental illness is rooted solely in the individual.” (Kaysan, 18). Being surrounded by girls with serious illnesses forced Kaysen to assume the role of a girl with a real mental illness. Society forced her to find something wrong with herself in an attempt to fit in. Kaysen questions what mental illness truly is. She asks,“Was everybody seeing this stuff and acting as though they weren't? Was insanity just a matter of dropping the act?” (Kaysen 41). Because Kaysen was labeled as being mentally ill although she was not, it became hard for her to tell what truly pronounced someone as mentally ill. Was everyone slightly crazy or were just some better at hiding it then others? Living in such an uptight society, people had no choice but to put on an act of perfection. When someone began to “drop the

Lynn Coady’s Strange Heaven is a novel that follows Bridget Murphy, a 17-year-old girl from Cape Breton, who is admitted into the children’s psychiatric ward in Halifax after giving birth. It follows her time in the psychiatric ward, and her release once she turns 18. After she is released Bridget must cope with her extremely religious, eccentric family and her social circle, and how they react to her institutionalization. Coady uses the supporting characters in her novel to draw a comparison between those who are considered mentally stable and mentally ill. She leaves a fine line in her comparison by how she portrays the psychiatric ward and the other patients, as well as creating absurd characters of those who are deemed mentally stable, and those who appear to stand on a moral high ground.

Throughout her life, novelist Virginia Woolf suffered with mental illness, and she ultimately ended her life at age 59. As art often imitates life, it is not surprising that characters in Woolf’s works also struggle with mental illness. One of her novels, Mrs. Dalloway, recounts a day in the life of Clarissa Dalloway, a high society woman living in London, and those who run in her circle. As the novel progresses the reader sees one of the characters, Septimus, struggle with post-traumatic stress disorder brought on by serving in war. At the end of the story, he commits suicide. While there is no explicit articulation of any other character suffering from mental illness in the novel, Septimus is not alone. Through her thoughts and actions, we can deduce that Clarissa also endures mental and emotional suffering. Though Clarissa does not actually attempt to end her life in the novel, her mental and emotional suffering lead her to exhibit suicidal tendencies. To prove this, I will examine Clarissa’s thoughts and actions from a psychological perspective.

According to the National Institute of Mental Health, about one in four American adults suffer from a mental disorder. This means that 57.7 out of 217.8 million people over the age of 18 are ill; never mind that mental illnesses are the leading cause of disability in Canada and the United States. Holden Caulfield, the controversial main character of J.D Salinger’s novel Catcher in the Rye, spends much of the book wandering through the streets of New York City. Kicked out of boarding school for the umpteenth time, he does many odd things: he calls a prostitute, tries to befriend a taxi driver, drinks with middle aged women, and sneaks into his own house in the middle of the night. While many of these things seem outré, some may even go as

Rose tends to have psychotic break, her mom noticed it before anybody else and decided to get her some help. Rose has the biggest support system from her family. After Rose favorite therapist dies Rose started to get worse this shifted with her ending her own life by overdosing on pills. In “Silver Water”, author Amy Bloom makes a point about mental illness and how people who are ill are still people, but often not treated as such; she demonstrate this through how Rose changes when she had Mr.Walker as her Therapist then Dr.Thorne and how she acts after Dr.Thorne dies.

A comparative literary study of the effect of mental illness on the central characters is the semi-autobiographical novels The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath and Girl, Interrupted by Susanna Kaysen. Comparing two women trying to deal with mental illness and are trying to cope with the mental pressures they put on themselves and by other people. Although the differences between these two novels are The Bell Jar shows Esther’s life before she descends into mental illness whereas Susanna’s story is about her time in a mental institution and experiencing other patients who are in similar situations.

A Beautiful Mind illustrates many of the topics relating to psychological disorders. The main character of the film, John Nash, is a brilliant mathematician who suffers from symptoms of Schizophrenia. His symptoms include paranoid delusions, grandiosity, and disturbed perceptions. The disease disrupts his social relationships, his studies, and his work. The more stressful his life becomes the more his mind is not able to distinguish between reality and fantasy.